Metered Monday

I told you my taste in poetry was mainstream. But there's a reason why a sonnet by Edna St. Vincent Millay is conventional. (I discovered her in tenth grade. Unfortunately, a friend beat me and got Millay for her project subject. I had to choose a different poet.)

What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,

What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,
I have forgotten, and what arms have lain
Under my head till morning; but the rain
Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh
Upon the glass and listen for reply,
And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain
For unremembered lads that not again
Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.
Thus in the winter stands the lonely tree,
Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,
Yet knows its boughs more silent than before:
I cannot say what loves have come and gone,
I only know that summer sang in me
A little while, that in me sings no more.

--Edna St. Vincent Millay

Review: To Desire a Devil

REMEMBER! This is the last day to fill out the survey and possibly win an ARC of HOLD STILL. This survey is for anyone who reads IBWB, including authors and publicists.

By Elizabeth Hoyt
Released by Hachette on November 1
Review copy provided by publisher



I chose to review this book because I wanted to look at a romance through my IBWB lens, instead of my TGTBTU lens. After all, I do the same thing for a number of young adult books. But I wanted to come at a romance thinking about how I would've liked it in high school, as opposed to now. (I can tell you that in high school my favorite romance was THE VISCOUNT WHO LOVED ME.)

TO DESIRE A DEVIL is the fourth and final book in The Legends of the Four Soldiers series, but it stands fine on its own. Any previous plot threads are introduced well, since both the hero and heroine are unfamiliar with what's been happening. Beatrice knows nothing because she was uninvolved with the French and Indian War; Reynaud knows nothing since he spent the last four years as an Indian prisoner. (It's set in the past, no one's using the term "Native American.")

I believe I can safely say I would've loved this in high school. Beatrice is rather modern: she has her own political views and she doesn't believe losing her virginity means she has to get married. She's willing to act like a meek miss but she's not going to surrender her personality. (There's also an interesting side plot involving her best friend, who separates from her husband due to neglect.) In addition, I would've thought Reynaud attractive, with the tattoos and all.

Okay, here's why I really would've loved it: Elizabeth Hoyt weaves the action of the story together with her own version of the tale where a prisoner is allowed to go free if he can convince someone to take his place of their own will. Hoyt weaves fairy tales into all of her historicals, and you can listen to her talk about this style here. I am a fairy tale junkie and thus love the intertextuality. She does write the tales in her own style, but they aren't used as exact parallels.

The plot of TO DESIRE A DEVIL is fairly simple: Reynaud returns to his home after years of captivity, only to find that his father died and his father's title passed onto the next relative. He can go to parliament to reclaim it, but marrying might give him an air of legitimacy. Marrying the current earl's niece would be even better. But Beatrice wants to marry for love. There is a bit of a complication in that Reynaud was captured during the Spinner's Fall massacre which was caused by a traitor - and that traitor would like to make sure no loose ends remain to reveal his identity.

But simplicity is fine due to Hoyt's exquisite writing. Like historical fiction author Sherry Thomas, she would be a delight to read even without her other skills due to her fine prose. As a bonus, the series epilogue is less treacly than romance series epilogues tend to be. (That doesn't mean there aren't babies. Of course there are babies.) TO DESIRE A DEVIL is ultimately fun and sexy - perfect for a teenager or an adult.

Review: The Lovely Bones (Audiobook)

By Alice Sebold, Read by Alice Sebold
Released by Hachette 30 September 2009
Review copy provided by publisher



I read THE LOVELY BONES in the ninth grade and loved it. I picked it up because I knew it was getting a lot of buzz and felt it deserved it once I was done. I enjoyed seeing the world through Susie's eyes, as her family dealt with her death and her killer seemed to escape justice. I have not read it since, so I remembered little about the details of the story when listening to the audiobook, but they came back quickly.

As for audiobooks, this is my second one. They seem popular, but I'm still not sure they're for me. For one thing, it takes longer to listen to the book than it would for me to just pick it up and read it. I listened to THE LOVELY BONES in my car, driving from my apartment to my home and back, but I kept missing little snippets when something happening on the road took my attention from Alice Sebold's voice.

As for this audiobook in particular, I have a love/hate relationship with Sebold's narration. She's rather dull. No effort to distinguish between the voices of different characters or to add emphasis to dramatic parts. On the other hand, her lulling voice makes the worst parts of THE LOVELY BONES that much more horrifying. I felt like crying as her family realized Susie was truly dead with the discovery of her hand-knit winter hat, soaked in her saliva - her mother's love aiding her murderer. It's a scene already wrenching in print, but Sebold's flat, emotionless voice makes it more thematically naturalistic.

However, the aural presentation slows the novel to a glacial pace. I remember the digressions being charming in the text, fleshing Susie and her world out. It fit the narration of a young girl, that she would be somewhat flighty and need to explain little bits of the story to explain the whole thing. It also fit with the idea of a dead narrator, one who has all the time in the world to tell her story and has lived her life - all she has to tell is her past and what others do, necessitating that the two weave together. I remember Susie's death happening so quickly. In the book, she warns you what will happen in the opening lines and her brutal rape and murder is complete by the first chapter. You've been put through the emotional wringer before the book truly begins. In audio format, this takes around 20-30 minutes. The digressions became distracting, making me think, "Is she dead yet?"

THE LOVELY BONES is a great story, and I look forward to seeing the movie. But I must recommend the book version over the audiobook. Perhaps the story would've been better served in this format by an abridgment or a different narrator. I'm not familiar enough with the format to tell.

The excellent movie trailer:

Thank You

The thing is, my life is defined by reading. It's certainly not empty of anything else, or shallow, but the written word remains at the center of it. At some point I fell in love with language and that was what ignited my passion. I've never had a broken heart because my first love is still with me. I don't know who I'd be without books. After all, I'm currently in college hoping to one day become an editor. I'm writing a creative thesis. The majority of my disposable income goes to buying books. I don't even have a vague guess who I'd be without books.

This is not a bad thing. I'm very happy with who I am. I wasn't always, and I still have moments when I wonder what in the world is wrong with me, but overall I try to be a good person and I think I succeed.

And here's to my parents, who aided me in becoming the ultimate bookworm. Every Wednesday night they took my sister and I to the library. We started in the children's section, with them reading us simple books. Hank the Cowdog, Amelia Bedelia, that series about an elf with pastel colored spines. Then I graduated to the older kids' section, reading Nancy Drew and Bruce Coville and Animorphs and Mary Downing Hahn and who knows what else. I was a tiny kid. If the weather was bad, I'd blow away. Third shortest on the ice-skating drill team. And every week I'd take home a stack of books approximately half my height. And my parents encouraged this behavior. One day I realized I'd read most everything in that section that appealed, and I wandered, discovering the YA section hidden between everything. I started reading content I didn't always understand, and sometimes just sped through because I wanted to get to the good parts, but it kept me happy and out of the adults' section for awhile longer. I cried when I moved after my parents' divorce and saw the town's library. It was a tin shack. When I saw it, I was holding a book that I bought for a quarter at my old library.

My parents also bought me books. Those book club order forms from school? My sister and I would circle the books we wanted and star the books we would throw a fit about if they didn't buy them. Then they would bargain us down to about ten books each. Those were bitter throwdowns. Then there was the used bookstore. To keep entertained on road trips, we carried an extra suitcase full of books. Used books are for more affordable by the suitcase load, but the store gave a decent rate of credit on books turned in. And they'd buy full-priced books too, every once in a while. For awhile after the divorce, my dad would buy my sister and I a book each every time we went into a bookstore. The good ol' days, in a way.

When it came to books, I was spoiled. I never had to fight to read. School taught me how, supplemented by my parents and sister working with me at home. The library provided limitless books I could have for a bit, my parents with a more limited amout I could keep forever. And believe me, with my voracious appetite for story I needed every book I could get my hands on. Without books, I wouldn't exist. My body would (likely) be around, but it would be a different mind animating it.

So . . .

Thank you Mom and Dad. I may not always be who you want me to be, but thanks for helping me become who I am. Thanks for enabling me when I needed it, and discouraging certain things that needed to be discouraged. Thanks for not taking away the books, even when they helped me ruin my eyesight and screw with my hearing. Thanks for providing for me. Thanks for loving me. Thanks for letting me be weird and withdrawn and for making me be proud of my brain. Thanks for never asking me what my blog is called because I would never post this if there was the slightest possibility you were reading it.

Metered Monday

This is my way of avoiding writing more content. Every Monday, at least through December, I'm going to share one of my favorite poems. If I think commentary is necessary, I'll include it. It probably won't be as my taste in poetry is fairly mainstream.

For this first one, I suppose I ought to warn for language. I think most of ya'll have probably heard the word before.

This Be The Verse

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another's throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don't have any kids yourself.

--Philip Larkin

(And Blogger won't show the formatting. Yay. Anyone know how to fix that?)